The baby arrives, the income rises, and a short break from work quietly becomes permanent. The home is comfortable, so why go back? Behind that comfort sits a belief we absorb from media and culture: that “we exist not for our liberation, but for consumption.” If consumption comes free, “why work at all?” The talk calls a life with no purpose worth exerting ourselves for hell, and asks what freedom is possible when someone else feeds us. Can we look honestly at what we have been taught to want?
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[From a session with students on women and work]
Acharya Prashant: Women are getting educated and empowered and everything and are choosing to sit at home. And when they were not so educated and not so empowered, empowered within quotes, they were actually going out to work. Now, why is this happening? This is so counterintuitive and mind-boggling, is it not? How is it possible that women with all the opportunities available to them today, with all the education that is available to them today, qualified women and knowledgeable women, they are opting to sit at home. What is happening? What is happening is that the husband’s income has increased, and the husband and the wife mutually decide that now that you are earning enough, why do I go out? And this is a mutual decision, mind you. Okay, I was working for three years post-marriage, but now that the baby has come, why do I need to work anymore? Or I take a break from work to take care of the baby, and I think that I’ll return after a year, and I never return because the home is such a comfortable place. Let’s face it, the home is such a comfortable place, especially if there is sufficient money at home.
